Custom code for Blackboard form buttons..?

I'm a student at Erie Community College in Buffalo NY, which uses the Blackboard system, especially for the many "online only" classes that are offered. I'm unfamiliar with any parts of BB other than the student interface, but I do understand the instructors have some additional content editing controls that I've only seen when my instructor uses them while her laptop screen is up on the projector. It reminds me of the WordPress system, which I used to design with at a company I used to work for.

Our instructors create upload pages for assignments, and I see an opportunity for a customization that would make everyone's lives easier, both the instructors and the students. I'd like to know if the buttons for uploading assignments can be customized with some Javascript, Java, of VB code behind them...?? To be more specific, there are buttons that say "Browse My Computer" and "Browse Content Collection", and I'd like to add a new one called, "Choose Eclipse Project".

The new button would be only for our Java programming classes, to streamline the process of uploading, downloading, and correcting homework assignments, which as it stands now is overly complicated for both the students and the instructors. The code behind it would be some simple client-side scripting, perhaps in JavaScript or whatever language would be suggested. It would have two parts, the upload code and some even simpler download code that would mostly be MIME type info to open the downloaded file in a certain program with certain specific command-line switches.

I've attached an annotated screenshot to give an idea of what I have in mind.

In Blackboard Learn, this type of customization would be very tricky, though perhaps not impossible for an intrepid hacker :-).

The file picker widget itself (the "Attach File" label and the two existing buttons) is a standardized shared component (a tag in the Blackboard tag library) that is used across the Learn interface wherever files can be attached, so limiting the availability of your custom button to just the assignment tool, in just a subset of programming courses that deal with Java, would have to be worked out. Potentially if there's a substring in all the right course IDs that you can reliably match to include/exclude the button course by course, you might be able to segment in this manner. Otherwise, you'll get a lot of History students asking "what's an Eclipse Project?"

To get the button on the page, recommend taking a look at the open source JSHacks Building Block from OSCELOT - having that installed on your Learn system (by your Learn administrator) may give you the hooks you need into the DOM on the upload assignment page to try this out. Note that the JSHacks tool is not a Blackboard-supported tool, and so it is very much use-at-your-own-risk and your-mileage-may-vary.

If you do get it to work, please post back to this thread, would love to see it in action!

1. a copy of the "Browse My Computer" button, with adjustments in the value and title fields.

2. An external css (hosted on Blackboard Content) is called to hide the button in the description field, that is, a page before the Assignment submission page. This css is done via mapping (div [class]> div [class]> div [class]). The external file code is:

I'm not understanding what the problem is. Submit the programming in a MS Word doc. Instructors can mark up (aka comment) either right in Blackboard or take more time and use Word's comment feature. In either case, the instructor makes the marked up doc available back to the student, although the former method is easier/faster if it satisfies what the instructor wants/need to do. What am I missing?